The Importance of Recognition.

Besides doing on-line training I manage a support team -- I hate the term "Help Desk" since it doesn't convey what we do.  We have a team of 4.5 people that help users of our applications get what they need.  We also get questions completely unrelated to the applications we support.  The expectation sometimes seems to be that since they received a great answer from us once we'd be able to help in all matters of technology. 

We launched a major upgrade to one of our applications last April.  It might as well have been an initial launch.  Many of our end users didn't even know the prior version existed!  We created new training, new guides, new support docs and hired 3 more bodies for the launch.

Since then we've been steadily work-work-working like happy little worker bees with no time to sit back and look at what we've done.  Last Friday a fellow team member (from a different department) mentioned what he'd seen done in call centers in the past - recognizing call achievement numbers.  For some reason I just think McDonald's ... over 2 million served!  Our achievement since last year isn't that high, but I was surprised to see that we've taken slightly over 10K calls since our launch last April.

10,000 for a team of 5.  About 700 calls per month.  May not seem like a lot for those of you that manage call centers but for our small team that has to assist people from soup to nuts in our application while still learning it themselves its no small feat.

I sent out the email to our team and CC'd our business partners recognizing them for taking on such a large number of calls while reducing calls abandoned or to voice mail.  Its a great way to show our support staff that their hard work hasn't gone unnoticed.

After the email I noticed they were in a better mood with slight smiles on their faces.  In these days where monetary recognition is almost impossible - a simple email can make someone's day and can be empowering.


Kudos to my team!